PREVIEW – Basingstoke Town v Llantwit Major

Where: The Camrose Stadium, Western Way, Basingstoke When: An earlier than usual time, 1PM on the 4th of August Prices: Adults £6 / Concessions £3 / U16 £1

Match Preview

Well, it’s here, the last pre-season game before the league games begin on the 11th of August away to Walton Casuals!

What a run of pre-season games we’ve had so far! We won 7-0 away to Alton, 6-0 away to Burnham, drew with National League side Eastleigh 1-1, lost a respectable 2-0 to another National League side Maidenhead, won 6-0 away at Fleet, then the very disappointing behind closed doors game vs Aldershot where we lost again a respectable 3-2. We then went on to win 6-1 in Alresford!

During the pre-season we’ve seen a few new players who have looked impressive, such as Zidane Akers and Adam Nditi to name a couple.
We’ve also seen Dean Stow introduced into the team who came from rivals Hartley Witney.

We still have a very strong squad, McAdden, Hollamby, Collier, Bayliss, Goater, Deadfield, Bennett, Smart, Kennedy and Bunting all still playing in pre-season.
We’ve also seen the likes of Jim Orvis and Tom Leggett hoping to break it into the first team squad!

We also have Dan Brownlie who comes to the club from Hartley Witney as First Team Coach.
He spent 9 seasons with Hartley before coming to us, the last 3 years as joint manager where he had successive promotions.

Let’s see if Jason and Dan can continue the current pre-season form against Llantwit Major and into the 2018-19 season! Remember, we had the 4th best home record last season in the league, so if we can improve on our away performances and continue to win at home, we could be in for a very good season ahead! We are currently a very generous 16/1 to gain promotion!

Now let’s look at Llantwit Major AFC.

Llantwit, a community club, are a very good side now in the Welsh League Division 1, having been crowned champions of Welsh League Division 3 in 2016/17 and Division 2 champions in 2017/18.

The newly promoted side’s manager Karl Lewis hadn’t planned their impressive promotion to Division 1, so it was a surprise to all when they dominated the league having until now never played higher than the Welsh League Division 2.

A few players to watch out for are Josh Morgan who was a goal scoring machine last season, Robert Jones and former Welsh Premier League player Anthony Rawlings.

They recently lost 18 year old Sam Snaith to Welsh Premier League side Cardiff Metropolitan University after he scored consecutive hatricks to help Llantwit Major secure the title in the 2017/18 season.

This will be a very good test against a very good Welsh Division 1 side, so I hope to see you all at the Camrose at 1pm on Saturday the 4th of August.

Reminder: A Match Day Programme will be available to purchase at this match for £1.00.
The online version will be available to download from 3pm Friday 03/08/2018.